The most exciting part of this procedure is the waiting because it allows you to let your imagination run wild about the ‘miracle’ that is making it’s way to your hot and sticky hands. You keep re-reading the description in the catalogue, visualizing every aspect of the next addition to your show. Magic catalogues have a language all there own, partly truth and partly fiction! Certain phrases are special flags that attract a youthful customer. My special favorites were ‘Packs flat and plays big’, ‘can be performed surrounded’ and ‘Needs no resetting’. At the bottom of the catalogue listing for the trick (just before the price) was a list of ways in which the trick was not accomplished. This list usually included; ‘No threads’, ‘No magnets’ ‘No mirrors’ and very often threw in a ‘No skill required’ as well. It was enough to keep your mind racing for days. Generally speaking when you finally got to rip open your parcel your first reaction was sheer stark disappointment. What was inside the package seemed like a waste of time and money and even if you could make it work it wouldn’t fool the village idiot. However you were stuck with it, because another ubiquitous phrase in magic catalogues is ‘No refunds and no exchanges’.These magic dealers have to make their living somehow and they have chosen the route of packaging inexpensive items into much more expensive bundles by combining them into a ‘So-called trick’. I am not saying that magic dealers are unscrupulous but I certainly wouldn’t let my daughter marry one.
A very early lesson in magic is that secrets cost money. The strange part is that if you spent long enough working on the trick, rehearsing it in front of a mirror and tinkering with it, you sometimes ended up with something that actually worked! Not always, in fact not very often, but every now and then you ended up with what we in the magic world call ‘a keeper’. Even weirder was the way that sometimes a fellow magician could really fool and impress you with what you later discovered was a trick you had long since discarded either physically or mentally. The magic dealer and postman may have brought the trick to your living room but it wasn’t going to go much further till you added a little something of your own.I would like to tell you that it all changes as you get older and wiser but it doesn’t. I have a garage full of props that seemed like a good idea when I bought them. In fact the only thing that changes is that the older you get the more money you spend/waste on tricks you will never perform. However along the way though, something does change, you start to develop a style and a personality all you own and that is when the magic really begins.
How does this subtle change exert it’s self? My belief is that it has a lot to do with your powers of visualization. While it is very rare to actually see the future, with a little practice it becomes quite possible to look carefully at yourself in the present and project that persona into the future. Maybe it is all that standing in front of mirrorsIntently watching your physical body. Seeing not just what you are but what you wish to become. This seems to be a trait shared by many performers, watch any actor who doesn’t think he’s being watched and you will notice they never pass a mirror without a glance. It is visualization not thought projection but maybe a little bit of time travel is involved. Unless I am very much mistaken the core message of my teacher is contained in just six words. I am I can I wish. It is the intensity and order of these three forces that creates your future and turns visualization into reality. We will discuss these three forces in more detail later but right now I want to see if the postman has delivered the mail. I am expecting a package with a new trick in it that ‘packs flat and plays big.’
